New details have emerged about Facebook Inc.’s rumored effort to develop a cryptocurrency for WhatsApp. The New York Times today that the social networking giant is hoping to launch the digital coin in the first half of 2019.

Facebook may launch its won cryptocurrency as early as the first half of this year – and the social media giant is working with crypto exchanges to be responsible for holding the digital coins. Rocked by the Cambridge Analytica data breach, Facebook believes the existing crypto platforms have a greater experience navigating regulatory issues, and also a better chance of vetting customers.

“I’m excited. I was surprised (the ban) was going to get lifted. It’s just taken a while, but I’m glad it happened,” said Ryan Brienza. Thursday was a good night for Brienza. The Plattsburgh entrepreneur can now expand his cryptocurrency business.”We’re going to be looking at expanding it.

Lawmakers in the United States state of California have introduced a bill to allow cannabis-related business to pay fees and taxes in stablecoins. The bill was introduced by the California State Assembly on Feb. 21.

New York-based commercial bank Signature Bank will begin offering financial services to fintech firms in the island nation of Bermuda, local news daily the Royal Gazette reports on Feb. 28. According to the Royal Gazette, banks in Bermuda have mostly avoided dealing with the fintech industry, which is in need of financial services.

We are at the dawn of a new age. You do not believe it? Well, just see how many banks are launching cryptocurrencies or at least digital coins that use the blockchain technology. Not only JPMorgan, one of the largest global banks of the world, has launched its own blockchain-based JPM Coin, now Dukascopy Bank has launched Dukascoin, its own crypto.

CGEX, a global exchange subsidiary and BTC market provider of Coinone, announced today the public listing of Cosmos ‘ ATOM token following its mainnet launch expected in early March. Cosmos is a decentralized ecosystem leveraging modular, adaptable and interchangeable tools to create unlimited scalability and interoperability between other blockchains.

PLATTSBURGH | The City of Plattsburgh has lifted its 18-month moratorium on new commercial cryptocurrency mining operations. The 5-1 decision came Thursday night after nearly 12 months of deliberations on how best to protect ratepayers from negative impacts of mining operations’ electricity usage, noise pollution and potential fire safety hazards.

While Venezuela’s economy continues to suffer under the haphazard mismanagement by Nicolás Maduro, it has caused the country’s citizens to rely on Bitcoin as a currency, store of value, and its use to transfer funds across borders.

Implemented on the second largest blockchain Ethereum (ETH) network while depended on the concept of smart contracts, Maker [native token MKR] is a case when the much criticized crypo-volatility is overcome to an extend being backed by Ether. Despite that Tether is one of the most popular stablecoins, much doubt surrounds the coin.

San Francisco-based online lending startup SoFI wants to allow its users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on its platform through a partnership with the digital asset exchange Coinbase, reported by CNBC on Feb. 26.

A startup based in Kyiv, Ukraine says its trading terminal Superorder, which is powered by automation features, can aggregate crypto trades across multiple exchanges, allowing investors to centralise their trading activities. According to the developers, Superorder is a “next generation trading terminal,” which provides users with centralized trading on any exchange from a single place.

Facebook is not satisfied with becoming a web 2.0 empire. After consolidating in the world of social networks, and buying the most important instant messaging appli on the planet (WhatsApp), now Mark Zuckerberg’s company has its eyes on crypto as its new goose of the golden eggs.

Signature Bank of New York will soon offer full banking services to financial technology firms in Bermuda, including crypto startups that have struggled to secure accounts. In a press release Thursday night, the government of Bermuda announced that Signature would offer U.S. banking services to licensed fintech firms, including 66 startups already incorporated in the country.

The Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange Has Added some support For The OmiseGo, OMG The GBX, which is also referred to as the Gibraltar-Blockchain-Exchange, which is an institutional grade, that is insured and regulated token sale platform together with being a digital asset exchange.

Great news for Fetch.AI and Binance LaunchPad as it was confirmed oby the Binance CEO o n February 25, 2019, hat the former’s token sale raised $6 million in a record 22 seconds. Binance has continued to ride on its wave of success.

After trading sideways since experiencing some volatility over this past weekend, Bitcoin (BTC) has now established a fresh trading range between approximately $3,800 and $3,900, finding relative levels of support at the former price and resistance at the latter price.

In January of 2019, student Conner Brown attended a guest lecture by a Professor Susan Athey at the University of Stanford Graduate School. She gave a presentation to his “Evolution of Finance” class titled “Blockchain and the Future of Finance.” According to Brown, the presentation contained “multiple misstatements” about Bitcoin and its fundamentals.

The bitcoin mining ban in Plattsburgh is over. Mayor Colin Read and the Plattsburgh Common Council put an 18-month moratorium on cryptocurrency mining in the city last March. Miners were coming to the city for its cheap power, a necessity for the operation.

Bitcoin has an image problem and Alex Jones, a bitcoin true believer and alt-right radio host most famous for being sued by the parents of Sandy Hook school shooting victims, is a walking public relations nightmare.

Litecoin is now the official cryptocurrency of the GLORY Kickboxing league after entering into a partnership with the professional sports league. This is a major step taken by Litecoin in order to promote the mainstream adoption of the cryptocurrency. After the following partnership, the online merchandise platform for the GLORY Kickboxing i.e.

A couple of surprises to come out of Meltem Demirors’ Twitter account in the last few hours. Firstly, that the CoinShares Chief Strategy Officer and Blockchain Council member speaks Turkish (who knew?). And secondly, that the Turks own more cryptocurrency than any other European nation. (If you consider Turkey a European nation, of course).

Ethereum price late on Thursday was holding gains just shy of 1%, after a generally muted session. It is hard fork day on the network, however limited volatility observed with ETH/USD. The Ethereum price in the latter part of trading on Thursday was seen trading with minor gains just shy of 1%.

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has posted a $100,000 reward for the discovery of the major Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX’s missing funds. Kraken announced the offer in a blog post on Feb. 28. QuadrigaCX has faced financial difficulty following the sudden death of its founder Gerry Cotten in December last year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has removed three cryptocurrencies from a list of those allowed for initial coin offering (ICO) investment and as a trading pair for the digital asset trade. Bitcoin cash (BCH), ethereum classic (ETC) and litecoin (LTC) have been removed from the list of accepted cryptocurrencies, according to the SEC.

DAC, a Polish software development and hardware integration company, has joined the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA), the largest commercial blockchain partnership in the world. Przemysław Szleter, chief executive officer of DAC, stated, “As we focus on helping our customers to improve their value chain efficiency, the application of blockchain technologies seemed to be an obvious step.

The Cabinet of Germany has revealed that the country’s blockchain strategy will be introduced by mid-2019, as a response to the growing development of fintech in the country. According to Cointelegraph, the chief executive body of the German government, stated that they will first organize an online consultation process prior to introducing the blockchain strategy.

Figure Technologies, the blockchain lending startup co-founded by former SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, grew throughout its first year of business last year. And now, the company will have some new funding to continue its expansion as Figure announced this week that it raised $65 million in its Series B equity funding round.

Bitcoin skeptic Vladimir Putin has set a July 2019 deadline for crypto regulations to be put in place in Russia. Putin made the announcement on the Kremlin website in a February 27 notice. In his order, President Putin told the Russian State Duma and the Council of the Federation of Russia to adopt cryptocurrency rules by July 1.

There is a wallet that seems to be affected by a vulnerability and that has been downloaded more than 500,000 times. The vulnerability seems to be related to the software sending wallet recovery phrases to Google’s remote spell checker servers in plain text. However, the company released a blog post refuting these accusations.

Northern Michigan University was the site of a special cybersecurity workshop Thursday morning. The Michigan InfraGard held their quarterly meeting at NMU, and in attendance were faculty, students, law enforcement, businesses and financial institutions. The main topic of discussion was Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Earlier this week, Coinomi, cryptocurrency wallet that enables users to trade, secure and manage their Bitcoin [BTC] and other cryptocurrency, was recently under the scrutiny of the cryptocurrency space because of an alleged vulnerability in the wallet was bought to light on Reddit by Warith…

The Swiss fintech market grew by 62 percent in 2018, according to a recent study by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences published on Feb. 27. The Lucerne University of Applied Sciences undertook an in-depth review of Switzerland’s fintech market for the fourth time.

It isn’t a secret that Bitcoin (BTC) is an embryonic market. The cryptocurrency, launched ten years ago, has long been subject to the whims of speculators, creating a volatile and unpredictable market for all but the most skilled traders. Even still, analysts en-masse have sought to discern where cryptocurrencies will find a long-term floor.

If you want to secure your future in the IT industry then it seems that blockchain and security are the areas you need to be in. A report from career marketplace Hired shows that in the past year there has been a 517 percent increase in demand for blockchain engineers year on year, and a 132 percent jump for security engineers.

Developed by MixMarvel, the acclaimed studio behind top ETH game HyperDragons, HyperSnakes introduces new abilities and battle royale mechanics to classic Slither.io gameplay. Players can compete with each other for free (and earn cryptocurrency for their participation), or raise the stakes by adding their own TRX (TRON’s native coin) to the prize pool.

Ripple (XRP) is on the verge of a major breakout that could see the price rise or fall hard in the days ahead. The reason behind this uncertainty is that while XRP/BTC remains bullish, the rest of the market does not show enough signs for a sustained bullish momentum.

After losing the second spot on the list of top trading currencies, weeks back, XRP is still traded at the value of around 0.30$ without enough momentum to go towards the price of at least 0.40$, presently traded at 0.31$.

When Square released its Q4 financial results, the company reported that bitcoin sales accounted for $166 million of its revenue last year, according to reports. The company filed a report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday (Feb.

Mining in recent years has become an everyday occurrence. Someone sets up a home PC, someone opens farms or buys specialized expensive devices such as ASIC-miners. Today, lots of mining programs exist with extensive functionality.

Cryptocurrencies are getting real and becoming much more acceptable day-by-day. The world of cryptocurrency and blockchain is gradually permeating into public consciousness. Ever since the global financial meltdown of 2008, man on the street is getting cautious of these powerful intermediaries like ‘Too-big-too-fail’ banks with entrenched interests and looking for an alternative form of exchanging ” value.”

Traders on social trading platform eToro say XRP is the most frequently traded cryptocurrency by unique open trades. Its January report shows that XRP also trades ahead of Amazon, and follows closely behind oil, gold, Apple and the NSDQ100. In January 2019, Apple topped the list as the most frequently traded stock with oil and …

Bitcoin (BTC) is now back above $3,800 after briefly falling below it yesterday afternoon. There was some unusual and extremely volatile trading activity late this morning, with Bitcoin (BTC) falling to $3,755 and rising to $3,900 in less than 30 minutes. Bitcoin (BTC) stabilized near $3,850 and then fell throughout the afternoon to about $3,800….

Steven Maijoor, who chairs the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), has shown support for further regulation of crypto assets. Maijoor said he would like to see financial instrument regulation applied to cryptocurrencies in line with Europe’s securities laws, ostensibly to “help protect investors.”

A purported Bitcoin millionaire ( BTC) who was previously involved in “making it rain cash” on the streets of Hong Kong, has reportedly been arrested for mining-related fraud, the South China Morning Post reports Thursday, Feb. 28. A 25-year old businessman named Wong Ching-kit and his 20-year-old colleague have purportedly been arrested by Commercial Crime Bureau officers at their office in Hong Kong.

Global crypto exchange Bittrex led a $1.5 million seed round in South African trading platform VALR. Bittrex CEO Bill Shihara told CoinDesk the South African market has “tremendous untapped potential.” Fellow VALR investor Michael Jordaan of Montegray Capital told CoinDesk that VALR’s support for 50 cryptocurrencies will offer the most diverse range of assets of any African exchange when it opens to the public on March 1.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a fresh order to Russia’s government demanding that they draft and approve a regulatory framework for the crypto industry. Although this seems like a positive development for the industry, similar orders have been issued on multiple occasions over the past few years to no avail, which calls into question the clout that these orders truly hold within the Russian government.

Crypto exchange Kraken is offering up to $100,000 to anyone who can help solve this year’s biggest blockchain mystery: what happened to QuadrigaCX’s coins? Kraken announced Thursday it would pay the reward to users who could help it locate the missing funds.

When customers purchase goods or services, they expect the company to maintain their brand promise and value proposition, whatever that may be. Keeping a brand promise, businesses draw attention to their brand, increase brand loyalty, and retain their customer base.

Ethereum’s much-anticipated Constantinople upgrade is now live. The upgrade is designed to boost the network’s efficiency and will reduce block rewards for miners by a third, meaning they will now earn 2 ETH instead of 3 for powering the network and validating transactions.

Digix, the platform that makes gold bars easily divisible and transferable using blockchain technology, has expanded its presence in the Korean market with the listing of its token, DGX, on ProBit, a leading exchange and marketplace for digital assets.

After dropping briefly to a low of $127.41 billion at the close of trading day on February 27, the market cap is back up to $130 billion, mirroring the market cap 24-hours hence. Bitcoin SV [BSV] pumped up earlier this week following a support announcement from CoinGate, since then the coin has been correcting downwards.

While institutional investors have been in the media’s eye lately, a recent report from Diar has revealed that retail investors have been quietly amassing Bitcoin. According to the report, Bitcoin holdings of addresses holding between 1 and 10 BTC have been showing steady growth of 5% since the last all-time high in December 2017.

Bearish and bullish pressure cancels out amid declining trading activity. Bitcoin recently added significantly to its value jumping above $4,000. There are just about the same resistance levels for Bitcoin as they are support levels. The bear pressure and the bullish pressure appear to be canceling out as Bitcoin maintains the position above $3,800.

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson suggested that bitcoin investors buy the post-crash dip because there are a lot of exciting developments right now that make the crypto industry worth investing in. Wilson proffered the advice in a February 28 blog post: “We are in the post-crash cycle in crypto, and that has made the sector interesting to me again.

Note: This is part two of a two-part series on why online privacy matters and the lengths people have to go to in order to retain their privacy in 2019. This piece is about the extreme lengths Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp goes to protect his privacy in 2019.

MOSES LAKE – The City of Moses Lake is holding a roundtable discussion on Thursday regarding potential trial zoning code changes and policy development for cryptocurrency mining. The discussion is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Council Chambers, located at 401 S. Balsam St.

The top ten cryptocurrencies diverged on Thursday, with EOS and Litecoin leading a narrow contingency of gainers against Ethereum and XRP, which traded in the opposite direction. Cryptoassets are on track for their best month since July, rekindling optimism that the worst of the bear market had passed.

The Constantinople and St. Petersburg network upgrades for the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum’s ( ETH), occurred today Feb. 28, according to ethstats.net. Specifically, the updates went live on the main network at block 7,280,000, in accordance with previously released schedule. Although the upgrade has two names of two originally separated updates, they have subsequently been combined into one.

Just when Jack Dorsey’s week was starting to look up, he must contend with yet another cryptocurrency giveaway scam. But while Twitter has long been rife with these fraudulent schemes, this particular bitcoin scam targets his other company – digital payments firm Square.

Hi Everyone, Just as we’re seeing a sudden increase in interest from the financial sector who are looking to integrate cryptoassets into their ecosystem, it seems that some countries are now seeing the urgency as well.

Switzerland-based cryptocurrency bank Dukascopy has warned customers that forex trading company GCG Asia is fraudulently claiming to be the bank’s authorized firm in an announcement published on Feb. 27.

With tight margins and stagnant markets across most coins, there is a huge demand to trade leveraged cryptos. Monfex, is a new player on the scene that is making leveraged crypto trading and even investing accessible and simple for its users.

Federal authorities have criminally charged a former East Hampton man in an alleged scheme to defraud investors. The United States Attorney’s office said he bilked investors in a digital currency company out of $6 million.

Facebook is said to be developing a ‘stablecoin,’ which is a kind of digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar. Social media giant Facebook is developing a cryptocurrency that will be pegged against the United States dollar, and is intended to be exchanged on Facebook-owned WhatsApp, according to multiple independent news reports.

Less than a week after the announcement of full trading support for XRP on the Coinbase Pro division of the San Francisco-based brokerage and exchange platform, the same functionality is coming to the consumer-facing wing of the firm. In addition, full support will be made available on both the Android and iOS Coinbase applications.

📰 News Alex Morris 📰 News Notably, Ripple, which employees are praising for having a clear sense of mission, is the only crypto-oriented company on the list Ripple, the San Francisco-based Blockchain startup, has been named one of the best workplaces in the Bay Area by Fortune.

United States major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has added support for Ripple ( XRP) to its retail platform and mobile apps. The exchange announced the development in a blog post on Feb. 28. The announcement states that Coinbase’s users can now purchase, sell, convert, send, receive, and store XRP both on Coinbase.com and the Coinbase Android and iOS apps.

📰 News Yuri Molchan 📰 News The Waves team has just announced in their blog about the approaching release of WRT which will prove the actual use of smart assets Waves is to release Waves Reward Token (WRT) – a smart asset for awarding Waves ambassadors by the rest of the community.

As of now, the digital coin market has just over 2000 different projects. Unfortunately, most of them have no future. But despite this, there are also valuable projects on the market that are able to take the industry to a new level and give a decent profit to investors.

Veteran trader Peter Brandt has an oddly specific bitcoin price target – $67,193. Brandt, who boats of 40-plus years’ experience in commodity trading, arrived at this figure by taking the combined value of the 33,000 tonnes of central bank-owned gold and dividing it by bitcoin ‘s fully-diluted currency supply of ~21 million coins.

For pretty much its entire ten-year history, Bitcoin has divided opinion. Some have nobly championed the cause of censorship resistant, decentralised money through immense market volatility, whilst others have slung as much dirt as humanely possible at the world’s most established digital asset.

The impact of wealth inequality is being felt worldwide. The divisive rhetoric is manifesting into tribalistic political battles in the US, and yellow vest protests spilling into the streets of Paris, all representing symptoms of an indisputable problem born from corruption and a lack of…

As earlier reported , has been working on a cryptocurrency and has reached a high level of progress with the creation of a stablecoin precisely that will be based on messaging app. This became evident as Facebook has already consulted with several cryptocurrency exchanges on the possibility of listing the cryptocurrency following its launch.

The founder of now-dead cryptocurrency My Big Coin has been arrested and charged with seven counts of fraud and unlawful money transfers for what is allegedly an extraordinarily blatant scam, even in the shady world of cyber-cash schemes. Randall Crater was nabbed in Florida on Wednesday for his part in persuading investors that the digital dosh was backed by real gold coins.

Ethereum (ETH), the second largest blockchain and digital asset in the market, is going to be undergoing a network upgrade at block 7,280,000. The fork is going to be happening in just a few minutes and it is going to be introducing a few upgrades to the whole network.

The long-anticipated upgrade Constantinople has officially activated on the ethereum blockchain. At 19:57 (UTC), the sixth system-wide upgrade to be released since the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap launched in 2015 has successfully been rolled out onto the main network at block number 7,280,000. But, that’s not all.

The War On Shitcoins Episode 13: Verge (XVG). The war on shitcoins is a Crypto.IQ series that targets and shoots down cryptocurrencies that are not worth investing in either due to their being scams, having serious design flaws, being centralized, or in general just being worthless copies of other cryptocurrencies.

NetCents Technology Inc ( CSE:NC) said Thursday it has inked a five-year independent sales organization (ISO) reseller agreement with a top merchant service and point-of-sale terminal provider (MSP). This means that the undisclosed MSP will now partner with NetCents to begin deploying the NetCents cryptocurrency payment platform to financial institutions, merchant acquirers and card issuers globally.

Activist group Blockchain Advocacy Coalition (BAC) has sponsored a bill in California’s 19th State Assembly District, set to allow legal cannabis businesses in the district to pay their state taxes using cryptocurrency. The bill was proposed by Assemblymember Phil Ting on February 20, 2019.

Thursday, Feb. 28 – crypto markets continued trading sideways, while the total market capitalization has remained stable around $130 billion after a major sell off on Feb. 24, according to CoinMarketCap. Market visualization from Coin360 Bitcoin ( BTC) is trading around $3,865, up around 0.3 percent over the past 24 hours at press time.

Blockchain microgrids have become a pivotal theme in the rapidly developing energy sector. Amit Sharma, Power Analyst at GlobalData, a global data and analytics company, offers his view on this development and what we can expect from blockchain microgrids in the future: “The global microgrid market size is estimated to grow at a compound annual…

SINGAPORE, Feb. 28, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Reebonz Holding Limited (Nasdaq: RBZ), a leading online luxury marketplace and platform in Southeast Asia, announced today that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with VeChain, a leading global enterprise-level public blockchain platform, to adopt the blockchain technology to establish the end-to-end provenance of luxury products sold on Reebonz’s platforms, which will help further its ecosystem strategy.

The chief executive body of the German government, the Cabinet of Germany, has revealed that the country’s blockchain strategy will be introduced by mid-2019. The Cabinet commented on the development of fintech in the country on Feb. 26, following a request for information from parliamentarians in the Bundestag.

HTC The crypto world is full of buzzwords, but if you can peel away the marketing fluff, you sometimes find innovation beneath the surface. You are often also reminded just how early it is in the history of this technology. Case in point: the blockchain phone.

Ripple Denies Paying For XRP Listings On Coinbase Ripple’s XRP token was recently listed on Coinbase. After this happened, some people started to talk about whether the company had paid to list the tokens or not.

On December 20, 2018, a bipartisan pair of Congressmen, Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Darren Soto (D-FL), introduced bill H.R. 7356 to enact the Token Taxonomy Act (the “Act”). The Act proposes several amendments to federal securities and tax laws that are intended to clarify how cryptoassets should be treated thereunder.

After years of waiting, Coinbase has finally decided to add support for XRP on Coinbase Pro. This surprising decision aroused the euphoria of many, sparking an increase in trading volume and of course a peak in the price of the Ripple’s token.

SINGAPORE – BitDeer.com , the leading computing power-sharing platform is now supporting mining for BCH, LTC, and ETH. Users now have a variety of mining options to select and can choose how to best utilize their rented computing power. Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ethereum sit in the very top of the coveted “Top 100 Cryptocurrencies by Market Capitalization” according to CoinMarketCap.com.

Russia may be about to adopt a new set of federal laws relating to cryptocurrencies. What’s more, it seems as if this decision has been taken at a top level – with a recent document reportedly showing that the cryptocurrency order has been approved by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.